This blog is dedicated to specific aspects of Amateur Radio, such as DXing, Contesting, Morse Code, Operating Techniques, Technological Innovations, Antenna improvements and performance, etc.
Plus news about my Radio station and my accomplishments. No particular policy on the posts, but no politics/religion/irrelevant posts will be tolerated. Respect this and be respected. 73 from Rhodes Island, Dodecanese.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Once again, a full weekend is over ...Family schedule was inavoidable, so between swimming with my baby daughter at the seaside and home shopping on Saturday evening, as well as going out for a coffee on Sunday morning, I participated in this year's RSGB IOTA contest.IOTA supports 12 hour participations, which was perfect for my schedule, so I organized my operating strategy accordingly. Last minute decision was my participation category. After a long period, I decided it was time to try an all SSB participation, so I took part as SOAB(A)SSB 12H LP from my home QTH in Rhodes Island, Dodecanese, with IOTA ref. nr. EU-001.I did not expect to have so much traffic due to this, but on the contrary, I made my best ever score in IOTA, exactly 1,2 Mio points with 850 QSOs in total.My strategy was to work more on 40m/80m, in order to work more EU mults, to compensate for the non-standard mult gathering of 10m/15m, which seemed to work as calculated.As an aftermath, I concluded that IOTA final score depends mostly on worked multipliers, no matter the casual traffic.In general, it was a very good lesson to learn for next year's event. Surely, next year will do more S&P.Low bands antenna system calibrated during last winter performed quite well on 40m/80m, despite the humidity QRN on 40m. High bands antenna was again the Cushcraft A3S and my FT-2K ran smooth at ~95W during the whole contest.I used Writelog with DXCluster support and contest audio recording.Here is a link to my best 10-minute rate audio file:

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Quite earlier than what it used to be in the previous years, I received yesterday in the mail the two paper awards, concerning the CQ WW contests of 2012.Here they are:

In the CW part, I just fooled around, working new band-slots for my DXCC Challenge award, but in the SSB part, I was devoted to the event, resulting to a ﻿

good ranking, having in mind the vast participation in my category, plus a new country record for Dodecanese.Having the latter in mind, there has been a spark at the back of my head, about a new long-term target, as far as contesting is concerned ... TBC ...

Monday, July 1, 2013

This year's RSGB's IOTA Contest is special, because RSGB celebrates its Centenary, since it was founded back in 1913.That is why, there are special awards for those participating in VHF Field Day or RSGB IOTA Contest.Specifically for the latter, all you need to have is at least 100 QSOs including 20 multipliers, in order to be eligible for these special awards.

The dates, rules, and all information you may need on 2013's RSGB IOTA Contest may be found here.

If you are interested in the announced IOTA operations for the IOTA Contest, just visit NG3K's respective site here.

And, if you're interested in the RSGB IOTA Programme in general, here is the official web site.

Following last couple of years' top rankings in my participation categories, I will be again present in the IOTA Contest, putting EU-001 on-air from my home QTH in the island of Rhodes. I will decide my category of participation, most possibly, the day before the contest, due to several other commitments.